The Turning (5 page)

Only when the door clicked shut did Trent realize he had been holding his breath.

OUTSIDE CLEVELAND

John Jacobs pulled into the parking lot and turned off his motor. He stared at the gates, and decided this was the hardest thing he had ever done. Which was saying a lot.

The Lake Erie penitentiary had earned its reputation as one of the worst prisons in the United States, and for good reason. Several years ago it had become the first one to be sold to a private company, the Corrections Corporation of America. The CCA promised to do it cheaper and better. But since the takeover, the Lake Erie prison racked up a steady stream of failed audits. Over the next two years, they flunked every inspection, nineteen in all. There were documented reports of prisoner abuse, filthy conditions, broken facilities, dangerous food. And still the state kept packing in more inmates. Overcrowding became a national scandal, with single cells holding as many as three inmates, and double cells containing seven. When confronted in a press conference, the governor responded that yes, he was aware of the complaints and the lawsuits, but he simply did not have money to change things.

John was still staring at the gate when a claxon sounded from within the prison. A few moments later a man-sized door opened in the middle of those massive steel portals. A guard pushed the opening wider, allowing a lone figure to walk through. He wore the bottom half of the suit he had worn at trial, though obviously now several sizes too large. John recognized him instantly. At thirty-three, Danny Jacobs was two years younger than his father—John’s brother—had been when he and Danny’s mother died in the traffic accident. The boy had shown such promise, a natural athlete with a blistering pitching arm whose fastball at the age of eighteen topped ninety-three miles per hour.

All lost to drugs and fast women and the lure of the life that had brought him here. Six to ten in Ohio’s most notorious prison.

Somewhere during the past four years, Danny Jacobs had acquired a slight limp, one that tilted his upper body to the left. John sighed. He had worked around many hard men and had seen what a knife wound could do. His eyes burned at the sight of that poor, wasted boy grown old before his time.

John and his wife had tried hard, serving as his legal guardians, offering him a home to come back to, even after Danny was sent upstate the first time. After the stint in state prison, John had been reluctant to let him into their home again, but Heather had softened his resolve with her pleas. The boy had written to say he had found faith inside. She believed him. She wanted Danny to know he was still loved.

Danny Jacobs had rewarded them by stealing Heather’s jewelry, including the three keepsakes she inherited from her grandmother. When Danny had been arrested that second time, John had not even shown up for the trial.

Danny had written him from inside, begging forgiveness. Knowing he had demolished his last connection to family. Knowing he had fallen, and was guilty of everything they claimed and more besides. He had found his way back to the cross, and he was writing as part of his penance. Not expecting an answer. Certainly not deserving one. But writing just the same. Which was how John had learned about Danny’s release date. He had certainly not planned to be here. He’d no intention of ever seeing Danny again.

Until that morning in church.

The emotional force that had carried him through those incredible moments was gone now. All John felt now was dread. Even so, the challenge was real. And the conviction. He had to do this.

John rose from the car. “Hello, Danny.”

“Uncle John?” The young man was not just lean. He was gaunt. His cheeks were hollow caverns. His red hair had lost its brilliance. His eyes were sunken inside his skull, their former crystal clarity now clouded. The gaze was as weak as the man’s walk. “I never thought …” Danny stopped to cough. His hands trembled, possibly from emotion, but John didn’t think so. He walked around the front of the car and took the cheap satchel. By the time he set it in the trunk, Danny had recovered. But he made no move for the car. Instead, he just stood there, watching his uncle with a haunted gaze.

John asked, “Do you have a place to go?”

“I’ve been assigned to a halfway house in Toledo.” He fumbled a slip of paper from his pocket. But he didn’t have the courage to reach out with it.

John stared at this husk of a man and felt the last of his raging embers fade out. “What have they done to you in that place?”

Danny’s chin trembled. He cuffed his eyes. But he didn’t speak.

“Get in, boy.”

As they drove west along the lake, John made a call. He considered it a test, unique and unmistakable. There was no way he could have expected to connect with his buddy on a Sunday afternoon. But his friend answered on the first ring, brushed aside John’s apologies. The man had recently become director of the transport center handling truck components headed across the state line to Detroit factories. John laid out the situation with a voice so raw he scarcely recognized himself. Told his friend about Danny’s parents and his lost life and his finding faith and losing his way. And the going down a second time.

His friend responded, “They didn’t send Danny to Lake Erie.”

“Matter of fact, they did.”

“Oh, man. The son of a friend at church was almost destroyed by the place.”

John glanced over. The man who had once burned bright as a living flame sat there, hunched against the window, staring out at the grey, windswept water. Silent and beaten. “Yeah, that pretty much sums up things at this end.”

“You think his faith is real, John?”

“All I can tell you is what he says.”

“Where is he assigned?”

“Hang on a sec.” He said to Danny, “Read out that halfway house address to me.”

Danny picked up the paper from where it sat on the middle console. It hurt John’s heart to see the boy’s hands shake so.

John repeated the address to his friend, who said, “It’s only about four blocks from our main warehouse.”

“You know why I’m calling.”

To John’s astonishment, the man replied as though he had been waiting all Sunday for this very request. “Got a spot open on the shipping floor. The work is basic. But it pays union wages.”

“Hold on, will you?” John relayed the offer to Danny. His once-proud nephew stared at him with the longing of true desperation. The lips trembled as bad as the hands. But no word emerged.

John said to the phone, “Danny thanks you. And so do I.”

The man gave John directions, said Danny would have to check in with his parole officer, buy some new things, grow accustomed to being a civilian again. Talking with the same flat calm he might use to discuss a truck’s timetable. He told John to have Danny report for work in three days at seven in the morning, and hung up.

Forty minutes later, John pulled up in front of the halfway house. He walked Danny inside, waited while he signed in, then motioned him outside again. There would be no hugs. Danny didn’t expect it and John had never been one for hugging guys at the best of times. Which this definitely wasn’t. John wrote out his cellphone and office numbers. “Don’t call the house. Heather doesn’t know I’m here.”

Danny’s voice carried a whole world of sorrow. “Do you ever think I’ll be able to tell her I’m sorry?”

“Hard to say. Prove you can hold to the straight life. We’ll see.”

Danny slowly wiped his mouth, the motion of a man twice his age. “Thank you, Uncle John.”

John fished out his wallet, pulled out everything he had except a twenty, and handed over the bills. Danny stared at the money in abject astonishment. John started around the car, pausing only to say, “Danny, look at me. Don’t mess up.”

The man fumbled over the simple words. “Thank you.”

He was still standing there when John reached the interstate entrance and the halfway house vanished from view.

A little over an hour later, John sat in his driveway, wondering the same thing that had held his mind the entire drive home.

Was that it?

If God had intended nothing more than allowing a repentant sinner to find an almost-friendly face waiting for him outside those dark gates, well, that was all right with John Jacobs.

He let himself in quietly, only to have his wife walk in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Did you go see Danny?”

John stared at her. “How did you know about that?”

“I read the boy’s letters, same as you.”

“You weren’t supposed to see them, Heather.”

“Humph. As if you’ve ever been able to keep a secret from me.” She crossed her arms. “How is he?”

“Well, he’s not good.”

“I’ve heard stories about that place.”

“From the looks of things, I’d say they’re all true.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“He’s in a halfway house. I got him a job.” John related the phone call, and finished, “I felt like I was laying it on the altar, calling my friend.”

“Testing God, you mean.”

“I guess. Sort of. Was that bad?”

Heather placed a warm hand upon his cheek. “John, there is not a single solitary thing about what you’ve done today that is anything other than good.”

NEW YORK CITY

S
unday evening Jenny Linn flew north to New York and took a  taxi to the Manhattan hotel the publisher had booked for her. Early the next morning, she woke from a dream about a country she might never see. She had found herself standing before a class in a Chinese classroom. She was talking and pointing at something on the board, but she could not make out her own words. Yet she knew they liked her, and they liked what she was teaching them. When Jenny opened her eyes from the dream, she realized she had been crying in her sleep.

The most natural thing in the world was to slip from the bed onto her knees. She did not so much pray as bend over in the agony of self-doubt. Before leaving for New York, she had prayed and prayed, asking God to speak clearly to her again, telling her what she should do. Instead, there had only been silence. So in the end Jenny had requested a one-week postponement on her acceptance of the Guangzhou assignment, and flown to New York for the first editorial meeting with the publisher. Only when she landed at La Guardia, she had discovered a message on her phone saying that the publishing execs had unexpectedly been called away, and they needed to delay the meeting until the following week.

Jenny now bent over her knees, her hands clenched as tightly as her eyelids. Her heart felt terribly heavy, burdened by a sorrow she could not name. Was the dream a sign? Was she doing something terribly wrong, coming here at all? If only she could
know
.

She finally sighed in defeat, rose from the floor, and started preparing for an empty and likely futile day. As she dressed, her cellphone rang. She plucked it from her night table and saw it was her father. “Pop?”

“Good morning, daughter. Am I disturbing you?”

Her father’s voice carried the flat hollowness of the car speaker. “No, Pop. Not at all.”

“Your mother and I are on the way to the airport. There’s a dental conference starting in Denver tonight. We just wanted to see if you had arrived safely.”

Her parents’ loving concern came through, despite the distance and her father’s formal tone. Jenny heard her voice splinter the words, “I’m here.”

Her mother said, “Jenny, dear, is something the matter?”

“I just had the most confusing dream. I was teaching in China. And then I woke up in New York.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then her father asked, “Do you feel like God is telling you something?”

Jenny laughed out loud.

“Did I say something funny?”

She heard the edge to his voice. “No, Pop. I had just been praying for that very thing. For God to tell me what I should do.”

She half expected her father to come back with something sharp. Her father disliked any hint of uncertainty. He carried himself with absolute conviction that all the things worth having an opinion about were there in black-and-white. Anyone with half a brain could see what was right. One of Richard Linn’s favorite expressions in an argument. He’d even used it against his daughter.

Only not today. To her astonishment, he asked, “Would you like us to pray with you?”

Suddenly she found herself unable to hold back the tears. “That would be really nice.”

Her father prayed first, then her mother. By the time they finished, Jenny was weeping openly. She had to take a pair of hard breaths before she could manage, “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You haven’t called me that in a very long while.”

“Just a minute.” She set the phone down on the carpet beside her, and used the top sheet to clear her face. As she picked up the phone again, a thought hit her. Unbidden. Unwanted. And yet the harder she resisted, the more certain became the conviction. She put the phone to her ear and said, “I have something I need to tell you. I was engaged to be married.”